October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. 

–Henry David Thoreau

As someone who loves New England, that’s often the first place I think of whenever I think of autumn. I happen to live in the desert in Southern Nevada near Las Vegas. Actually, I can see the Las Vegas Strip from my dining room window. Here in Southern Nevada, fall has a different kind of feel. Autumn is a blessed relief from the 105+ degree days (with humidity) we have during the summer. Finally, just this week, the temperature has dropped and I feel the blessed relief of cool mornings. Normally, my neighborhood is lined with trees that turn autumn-wonderful in October. Unfortunately this year, the weather stayed hot until just a few days ago, so the autumnal tints are only the barest of hints right now. If you know where to look, the desert hills come alive with brilliant pockets of color red, orange, and gold. To be honest, the trees shouldn’t be here in the desert, but someone planted them, and I’m glad they did. Knowing how hard these trees work to thrive in an arid climate gives their seasonal show an added layer of beauty. Their colorful leaves are a celebration of surviving yet one more scorching summer. Even though the autumn colors last only a few weeks, I’m grateful for their burst of brightness, and I look forward to their changing hues every October. 

For those of us who live in the desert, autumn and cooler temperatures invite us outside, pulling us up into the foothills to seek out bursts of crisper winds. Hiking a desert trail in late October or November offers even more reprieve. Is it as grand as the colorful forests of trees or yellow and or the tall red-tinted pines along the shore in the northeastern part of the U.S.? Not at all. I’ve had my moments, actually, many moments over the years when I’ve wished to return to New England to live. But I’m continually relearning that the desert has its own beauty, and I’m lucky enough to live on maybe the only street in all of Southern Nevada with such autumn beauty. Autumn doesn’t need sweeping forests to be meaningful; instead, it needs the shift in light, the pleasant drop in temperature, and the willingness to notice the changing beauty right in front of us. 

Some of my favorite thinkers loved the autumnal colors as well. Henry David Thoreau believed that autumn was the crowning climax of the natural year. His thoughts on the season—from his 1862 essay “Autumnal Tints” and also in his journals—are shared through philosophical and ecological themes. Thoreau argued that society pays too much attention to agricultural harvests while ignoring nature’s grander yield as the environment changed in autumn. He viewed the changing colors not as leaves dying, but as leaves reaching full, perfect ripeness, and he compared the leaves to ripe fruit.

Thoreau said, “A great many, who have spent their lives in cities…have never seen this, the flower, or rather the ripe fruit, of the year.” Watching the leaves fall offered Thoreau a profound metaphor for human mortality. Rather than fearing death, he said how gracefully trees shed their foliage to nourish future growth, seeing in them a blueprint for aging with dignity. Thoreau said, “How beautifully they go to their graves! How gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!… They teach us how to die.”

Thoreau was a scientist as well as a philosopher, and he tracked the progression of autumn month by month, just as he did all of the seasons. The sections of Walden are divided into the four seasons. In autumn, Thoreau thrived on watching the scarlet oaks, sugar maples, and golden elms glowing in low sunlight. For many people, autumn is bleak. After all, the pretty-colored leaves are dying. But Thoreau prized autumn for its subtle, lingering copper and purple hues (he made a point of studying the purple hues), and he used autumn as a time of reflection; he noted that many people often miss the brilliance around them simply because they aren’t trained to look for it. He said, “There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate,—not a grain more.”

Thoreau said, “It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!–painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,–some choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and meeting them half-way.”

Mary Oliver also appreciated the colors of the autumn months. She didn’t mourn the end of summer; as someone who lives in the desert, neither do I. Instead, she marveled at the radiance of autumn’s decay, seeing the red-orange colors of the changing canopy as the final act before winter sets in.

Here is her “Song for Autumn”

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

(from Devotions, 2017)

John Keats also loved autumn. In his poem “To Autumn,” he wrote,

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core…

There is something magical about this season that has captured our collective hearts. Autumn, with its crisper weather that begs for comfy sweaters, hot tea, and reruns of Gilmore Girls, turns our thoughts toward comfort. We begin reaching for extra blankets, and make chicken soup (my grandmother’s recipe, heavy on the dill), and light candles and fireplaces (an electric fireplace for me). We return to beloved comfort books. There’s something satisfying about opening a book while the afternoon light fades into pastel shades, different from the harsher summer light. From my bedroom window I can enjoy the glow of the golden hour earlier each night, and I make a mental note as the sky changes from blue to pink to gold while I’m sitting here, in my comfy chair, thankful I have this moment to enjoy the fleeting but beautiful colors of autumn, even in my little corner of the desert hills.